


Chapped

by Adira_Tyree



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Expect more, F/F, Fluff, Kissing, at some point anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-09
Updated: 2014-10-09
Packaged: 2018-02-20 13:23:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2430380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adira_Tyree/pseuds/Adira_Tyree
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Courier finds an unexpected love in Veronica, and isn't really sure how to handle it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chapped

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ChocoChipBiscuit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChocoChipBiscuit/gifts).



Her lips were soft beneath, but chapped, like mine.

I don't know what I was expecting. Maybe sparks or fire, I don't know. But whatever it is, it was soft. Warm in my gut. Something I haven't felt in a very long time.

She looked at me like she was seeing me in a new light. For the first time as someone she could touch, could hold. Like she hadn't noticed the way I watched her. Hadn't allowed herself to notice. Maybe she had and I was just so out of touch with love that I was the one being oblivious.

After all, all I knew of my life before were glimpses - a flash here and a flash there. A man in a suit with a wicked grin and need in his eyes, a teen boy's confused touches, a red-lipped smile from a beautiful woman I knew I should remember.

Veronica was none of those things. She was firm and sure but gentle, attractive but not quite beautiful. Soft, with chapped lips and dry skin. Like mine.

 

* * *

 

I didn’t talk to her for a full week after the first kiss. It wasn’t because I felt awkward about it; people kissed all the time. No, it was more that I was terrified that she’d reject me, tell me she wasn’t looking for something like that from me. That we were just friends.

That I had been wrong, and she hadn’t been trying to get me to kiss her.

It was a terrifying prospect. The more I thought about it, the more likely it seemed. What was I thinking? Why did I always read into things too far? Sometimes a look was just a look.

When I saw her next, she was sitting cross-legged on the pool table, hunched over a pile of parts that looked like they must have belonged to something at one point, but by themselves didn’t really seem to add up to anything. A lamp sat on the table in front of her, illuminating the parts but casting her face in shadow.

I couldn’t even be sure if she’d seen me. Something about the way she was focused, so intent on fiddling with the little pieces, made me change my mind about talking to her. She looked so happy when she was tearing things apart and putting them back together.

Maybe she’d do the same to me.

 

* * *

 

There must be a law somewhere about the universe stating that the simple questions will always be the most complicated ones.

If I hadn’t kissed her the week before, I wouldn’t have thought twice about asking her to come down to the Tops with me. Now? It was one of those questions that sounded oddly like a date, but was really more of a “hey I need to kill the guy who shot me, wanna tag along?”

Admittedly, that sounded exactly like the kind of date Veronica would adore.

 

* * *

 

After taking care of Benny, I thought I would have felt… something. Something more than all I did. Maybe even just something better. _Relieved._

All I felt was like I’d lured a man to his own bed with the promise of sex, and shot him in cold blood instead.

Veronica wasn’t much help, just told me it was exactly what he deserved for shooting me in cold blood in the first place. Somehow we didn’t seem to agree when it came to ‘an eye for an eye.’ Did it really equal out? I hadn’t even really died, and there had been no one to try to save him.

The one good thing that came out of it all was that Veronica got a new toy to play with: Yes Man.

 

* * *

 

 

Two weeks after the kiss, I started wondering if either of us were going to bring it up at all. Nothing _felt_ different between us, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. She seemed more and more perfect as time went on. Just as much though, I seemed less and less the kind of woman she would be interested in.

She was the embodiment of everything I didn’t understand. If it had non-organic parts and functioned on electricity, she could fix it. What to me was a pile of scrap metal, to her was a shining mound of potential. Her fist was as strong as her words, and I hardly even knew how to shoot.

I was good at fixing broken bones and bargaining for better prices, though usually I had no idea what it was I was selling. Sometimes she’d yell at me for selling parts she’d been looking for, but most of the time I wasn’t sure if I had even described the right thing. In the end she’d just roll her eyes and smile at me.

Part of me wanted to bring home little pieces-parts for her – like a bird bringing shiny pretty things back to the nest for its mate. The rest of me was afraid I’d bring her something stupid.

 

* * *

 

Is there a right way and a wrong way to kiss a woman?

I don’t remember kissing many people in general, male or female. I know it’s something that the NCR wouldn’t like, two women kissing each other, but they wouldn’t exactly complain either. Maybe the “wrong” part was that we did it in public.

The lights, the buzz of the crowd, the booze in my blood, and the victory that was getting back out of Caesar’s Fort alive: all of it added up to a sudden build of desire and nothing else really mattered anymore. We were alive and we were happy.

So I kissed her. Again.

It wasn’t the same as the first kiss; this one was deep and passionate and wanting. It was the difference between cola and liquor, water and electricity. I wanted to press her closer and closer to me, press until she melted into my skin.

She was the only person I wanted to belong to.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I may or may not write more for this! We shall see. For now, I'm happy with this. =]


End file.
